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$xhtml = array(
	'<{title}>' => 'Soy milk and vinegar',
	'takedown' => '2017-11-01',
	'<{body}>' => <<<END
<img src="/img/CC_BY-SA_4.0/y.st./weblog/2018/06/21.jpg" alt="Sunlight-induced camera haze on a forest path" class="framed-centred-image" width="649" height="480"/>
<section id="drudgery">
	<h2>Drudgery</h2>
	<p>
		dreamed a Walmart location was pumping much-needed water away from the irrigation channels in the garden of a neighbouring house and using it to flood the yard of another neighbouring house, just because they&apos;re evil.
		The flooded yard belonged to a former coworker of mine, while the drained yard belonged to a stranger that was showing me the problem.
	</p>
	<p>
		Before the water issued, the child of the homeowners at the drained yard used to hide their play cape and get their other parent to come back to earth (this parent worked in a space station) to find it for them before the child would go back inside.
		It was some sort of game they used to bond and an excuse for the parent to come see their child.
	</p>
</section>
<section id="cornstarch">
	<h2>Cornstarch</h2>
	<p>
		I woke up this morning craving veggie dogs, for some reason.
		I don&apos;t eat them often, so I didn&apos;t have any at home and needed to go shopping.
		Since I was at the store anyway, I picked up some cornstarch.
		Much to my surprise (I&apos;m not much of a chef and don&apos;t know much about basic baking ingredients), the jar said the stuff was good for thickening sauces.
		I was told it&apos;d make a good binding agent, an emulsifier, for keeping the water-solubles from separating from the oil-solubles.
		I think I might be able to get away with using this <strong>*instead*</strong> of the mayo though.
		My next experiment is trying to use the cornstarch to thicken the soy milk base into a dressing without oils.
		I&apos;ve mixed the following ingredients and left them in the refrigerator:
	</p>
	<ul>
		<li>
			100 grams soy milk
		</li>
		<li>
			15 grams vinegar
		</li>
		<li>
			3 grams onion powder
		</li>
		<li>
			3 grams garlic powder
		</li>
		<li>
			3 grams cornstarch
		</li>
	</ul>
	<p>
		The concoction separates worse than before though.
		I don&apos;t think the cornstarch is responsible, but the lack of mayo.
		It&apos;s been the vinegar reacting with the soy milk all along, and the thickness of the mayo was slowing down this separation.
		I tried adding a large, unmeasured portion of cornstarch in case it&apos;d help, bit of course it didn&apos;t.
		It still separated badly as before.
		I&apos;ll need to look for a solution when I can.
	</p>
</section>
<section id="drudgery">
	<h2>Drudgery</h2>
	<p>
		My discussion post for the day:
	</p>
	<blockquote>
		<p>
			For some reason, the learning journal assignment got posted here instead of the discussion assignment.
			The actual discussion assignment is as follows:
		</p>
		<blockquote>
			<p>
				For your first Discussion Assignment, you will write about the four main things you noticed about the story you read.
				Do <strong>NOT</strong> retell the story, but give a description of what you thought about in relation to the story when you read it.
				What stood out for you?
				What made you think?
			</p>
			<p>
				In addition, you must extend the discussion by responding to at least three (3) of your peers&apos; postings in the Discussion Forum and by rating their posts.
				Instructions for proper posting and rating are provided inside the Discussion Forum for each week.
			</p>
		</blockquote>
		<p>
			I chose to read <a href="https://classicshorts.com/stories/force.html">The Use of Force</a>.
			The first thing I noticed was that no quotation marks were used.
			As the characters spoke, their dialogue was just mixed with the rest of the surrounding text, not delimited in any way.
		</p>
		<p>
			Next, I noticed that the doctor was making a house call, which was probably pretty common at the time it was written.
			The story is old, which was part of the reason I&apos;d chosen it, and things were done differently back then.
			I&apos;d assumed in the first paragraph that the doctor was being summoned to a particular part of the hospital to meet the patient, but this view of the story was quickly shattered in the second paragraph.
		</p>
		<p>
			The third paragraph confirmed the suspicions the title and the first paragraph had left me with: the child was being abused.
			The parents needed treatment for their child, but they didn&apos;t trust the doctor and didn&apos;t want to tell more about the situation than they had to.
			However, the treatment the child needed wasn&apos;t related to the abuse as I&apos;d thought.
			They had a separate illness that worried the parents.
			Later, it turned out that this was a mislead altogether.
			The title meant that the <strong>*doctor*</strong> was going to use force on the child during the course of the story, not that the parents had before the story had begun.
			The clever misdirect had added vagueness to the already vague atmosphere of the story.
		</p>
		<p>
			My last main observation was that while the child fought and lied against their own self-interest.
			Some of that is no doubt innate to the child, but some is a matter of upbringing.
			There&apos;s a measure of compliance you can instil in your children, especially when their lives depend on it.
			And why lie about symptoms?
			The child didn&apos;t want their throat examined, but they likely wouldn&apos;t need it examined in the first place if they&apos;d just admitted their sore throat to begin with.
			Or if they still did need it checked out, their mouth wouldn&apos;t&apos;ve gotten cut up by shards of the wooden tongue depressor had they not bitten it to pieces in an effort to prevent a simple visual examination of their throat.
			Yes, the doctor, as the narrator, admits to having gone a bit too far.
			However, the child could have easily and simply prevented all of this.
		</p>
	</blockquote>
</section>
<section id="commute">
	<h2>Commute</h2>
	<p>
		The commute to and from the $a[EUGLUG] meetings are more of an issue than I thought.
		Last week was terrible because I&apos;d had to make the trip twice, getting lost both times.
		This time, I only made the trip once and stayed right on track, but it was still a pain to get home, especially in the dark.
		I&apos;m out of shape.
		Maybe these trips will get easier with time, and maybe I&apos;ll build up the required muscle to make this not be so bad.
		I can&apos;t just quit going though.
		I need some way to get to know people somewhat like myself, even if it&apos;s just a small group.
		It&apos;s good for my mental state.
	</p>
</section>
<section id="Minetest">
	<h2>Minetest</h2>
	<p>
		It occurred to me on the way home that pine trees are an interesting corner case for my tunnel plans, just like jungle trees.
		While jungle trees are unusually tall, pine trees (if grown correctly) are topped with snow, a node that doesn&apos;t take up the full space most nodes would.
		I wouldn&apos;t want these trees sticking into the ceiling.
		If they reach one node into the ceiling, there&apos;s a strange air pocket up there.
		It they reach two nodes in, a strange air pocket rests on the outside of the tunnel.
		Ideally, the pine trees would be a maximum of eleven nodes high without snow, or twelve nodes high with it.
		I decided to dissect the schematic files to find the hight once I got home.
	</p>
	<p>
		The results were surprising.
		The schematics for the with- and without-snow pine trees were identical in hight: fifteen nodes.
		As it turns out, the pine trees with snow necessarily have one less trunk node than the ones without snow.
		They&apos;re shorter!
		So I guess if you don&apos;t care about snow and you want to maximise pinewood protection, grow them without the snow.
	</p>
	<p>
		Anyway, it looks like pine trees will need to be grown from saplings set one node into the floor, just like jungle trees.
		(Jungle trees grow one node downward from where they&apos;ve been planted; otherwise, they&apos;d need to be set two nodes down, with the dirt node appearing under the tunnel itself.)
		This&apos;ll allow pine trees to always grow fully within the protected space of the tunnel blocks, unlike the jungle trees, which still have a chance for their tops to poke up where they&apos;re not wanted.
		Plants sharing a pine tree&apos;s grow light will also need to be set one node into the floor, just like those that share light with jungle trees.
		Water seems to destroy snow nodes though, so the upper snow node, if it pokes up to the the top of the protected space.
		I guess maybe the best way is to set the pine trees two nodes down, so they <strong>*can&apos;t*</strong> expose their upper snow like that?
		That&apos;d introduce complications though.
		The dirt would need to be under the tunnel, so it&apos;d need to be reclaimed after use instead of left in place.
		Cotton and wheat wouldn&apos;t be able to share the grow light with pine trees either, as the supporting dirt node can&apos;t be removed when using farm crops decoratively.
		Bushes that share a grow light with pine trees, on the other hand, would have their tops level with the floor.
		They wouldn&apos;t be ornamental bushes any more, but a <strong>*part*</strong> of the floor.
		I&apos;ll need to reconsider the current plan, and potentially move the pine tree hub out of the centre of the map.
		Perhaps it&apos;s best for it to connect only to the bush nodes, not also the crop nodes.
		This&apos;d require that the pine tree be in the opposite corner of the map as the jungle tree.
		I might instead want to just grow pines without snow.
		But which is worth more, one trunk node or twenty-five snow nodes (two and seven ninths snow block nodes)?
	</p>
</section>
END
);
